Walking and elephants
All the proteins that our cells are made of and that help with the chemical reactions they carry out, are built with the cells blueprint of genetic code. A particular protein called P53 watches over this construction process checking for coding errors. If it all goes without a hitch, P53 is then neutralized by binding to another protein. But if P53 encounters a defect in the DNA during transcription, the binding does not take place and a cascade of DNA repair mechanisms is set into motion. If the defect is not repaired, the immune system may be called up to destroy the cell.
But cancer cells are smart and have ways to help facilitate the binding of P53 to its suppressor protein and stop the anti-cancer mechanism from the start.
Recently, researchers at Autonomous University of Barcelona found that elephants — that rarely get cancer — have 20 varieties of P53 compared to only one for humans, making it easier for them to fight a cancer’s ability to circumvent the anti-cancer process. Earlier research on mice genetically engineered to have extra copies of P53 were also noted to have less DNA damage.
We have all given plenty of attention to the things that can cause our DNA to be damaged and increase our cancer risk such as tobacco smoke and other toxic chemicals, ionizing radiation, certain foods, viruses, hormonal effects from obesity, and random mutation, but defects in our gene repair mechanisms or our bodies’ ability to stop cancer otherwise have been underacknowledged.
Even though the death rate from cancer in the United States has been going down for decades, this is mostly because of improved diagnosis and treatment of cancers of the lung, colon, breast, and prostate. Unfortunately, it has not been so much a product of weight loss and exercise that can both decrease cancer risk.
Exercise works by increasing our concentration of immune cells called “natural killers” that help stop early cancers and has been linked with lower rates of more than a dozen types.
A new study that made the Top 20 list for primary care last year out of 26,000 medical studies was a simple 10-year survey of 12,000 older adults looking at daily step count and all-cause mortality.
Those individuals that walked eight to 12,000 steps daily had less than one-10th of the deaths from any cause compared to those that were relatively inactive — walking less than 4,000 steps. The benefit seems to be independent of pace or how those steps were achieved. Even more recent research indicates that if American adults would walk for 30 minutes a day, it would prevent 300,000 deaths a year.
Association is not necessarily causation, but we already have thousands of studies linking exercise with lower mortality or numerous secondary health markers including cancer.
I don’t know of anything else in medicine that is more significant, and it is free.
William Culbert is an Oak Ridge resident and retired physician.
This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Walking and elephants
